If you thought that going in-house was the safer, more predictable career choice, you may have to sit down and rethink your options.
Details about yet another shaking of the tree at Apple after the jump.
Apple, known for its merry-go-round of corporate attorneys, has just suffered yet another setback as its top corporate attorney Charles Charnas has resigned after only eighteen months on the job. Charnas, a seasoned 18-year veteran and former acting-GC of HP, was originally lured to Apple by recently departed former GC Daniel Cooperman in 2008 to head the corporate department.
Charnas was well regarded and his original hire was viewed as a coup for Apple:
- “He’s been known as one of the high-profile heavy hitter corporate lawyers in Silicon Valley for many years,” said Anna Marie Armstrong, a legal recruiter for Milegal… “It seems like Apple’s at a point where they want to hire really senior experienced lawyers for their in-house department.”
Just how hard is it to work with Steve Jobs? Take a look at these recently departed GCs:
- Nancy Heinen had the job for 10 years, before she took the fall for the company’s backdating mess;
- her replacement, Don Rosenberg, left Apple and $30 million worth of stock options in order to become Qualcomm’s GCafter about two years;
- then came Cooperman, who after only 22 months, began his “retirement,” presumably in order to avoid being fired. He was unable to cash in on $18 million due only 2 months later.
Charnas has stepped up in rough patches before: he became acting-GC at HP following the pretexting scandal by former GC Ann Baskins. The company ultimately went outside for her replacement, passing Charnas over for former Morgan Lewis partner Michael Holston.
Given the propensity for corporations to get caught up in scandals, it is safe to say that Charles Charnas will not be searching for a new job for very long.
No word yet on how much Charnas is leaving on the table or what he’ll do next, but it certainly seems that Bruce Sewell, the GC since September, is clearing out the Cooperman loyalists.
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